In Julian’s time the ferocity of the pagans sprang forth in all its savagery, as though their reins had gone slack. Thus it happened that in Sebaste, a city of Palestine, they frenziedly attacked the tomb of John the Baptist with murderous hands and set about scattering the bones, gathering them again, burning them, mixing the holy ashes with dust, and scattering them throughout the fields and countryside. But by God’s providence it happened that some men from Jerusalem, from the monastic house of Philip, the man of God, arrived there at the same time in order to pray. When they saw the enormity being perpetrated by human hands at the service of bestial spirits, they mixed with those gathering the bones for burning, since they considered dying preferable to being polluted by such a sin, carefully and reverently collected them, as far as they could in the circumstances, then slipped away from the others, to their amazement or fury, and brought the relics to the devout father Philip. He in turn, thinking it beyond him to guard such a treasure by his own vigilance, sent the relics of this spotless victim to Athanasius <of Alexandria>, then supreme high priest, in the care of his deacon Julian, who later became bishop of Parentium. Athanasius received them and closed them up within a hollowed-out place in the sacristy wall in the presence of a few witnesses, preserving them in prophetic spirit for the benefit of the next generation, so that, now that the remnants of idolatry had been thrown down flat, golden roofs might rise for them on temples once unholy.
(transl. Amidon)
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